


Terrified Vague Fingers

by EzraBlake



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Brain Damage, Discussion of Rape, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Face Slapping, Fluff, Happy Ending, M/M, Murder, Seizures, Service Dogs, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 23:04:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16417724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EzraBlake/pseuds/EzraBlake
Summary: Will hits his head during the fall, and Hannibal gets what he wanted—Will’s full, constant attention—but it comes with a catch. Is this still the Will Graham he fell in love with?





	Terrified Vague Fingers

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: This fic is written in first person, and involves the experience of taking care of a loved one with brain damage. This could be a sensitive issue for some, so please read with caution.
> 
> Title from Leda and The Swan by W.B. Yeats.
> 
> I also write original fiction. You can find me on Goodreads or on my website.

It’s raining. Will presses his cheek against the glass and watches his breath fog the window. He is enamored of water in all its multitudes, and twice he’s nearly drowned himself trying to swim; still, he purrs and squirms into his nightly bath.

Not so of thunder. The first crack sends him skittering under the dining room table to curl himself against Poppy, who Will believes to be a rescue but is actually a trained service animal. She isn’t afraid. She licks his face and doesn’t snap when his frantic elbow accidentally finds her ribs.

“Will,” I say. I wonder if he’s forgotten that I’m in the kitchen. The snick of the potato peeler is incidental in the face of this downpour.

He doesn’t answer, so I call him again, already untying my apron. I’ve long since given up on training him to do anything—though he’s usually at my feet the instant he hears his name, it’s only because he wants to be there.

“Will,” I repeat, crouching at the table. He eyes me, unsure whether I can offer more comfort than the dog. 

She and I have formed an uneasy truce. Though she’s fiercely loyal to Will and occupies more of his attention than I would like, she recognizes me as the alpha of the house—never mind that the entire concept of pack hierarchy is based on a flawed study of wolves in captivity. We three wolves infrequently venture from our cage.

“Will,” I say, and at last he slinks from the safety of the table to rest his head in my lap, his bare foot still nestled under Poppy’s belly. I’ll find the sock later, no doubt abandoned in the last place a sock should be. “What did we learn about thunder?”

He stares at me. I feel a pang of sadness, even though his gaze has become less clouded with time.

“Thunder is only the expansion of heated air in the sky. It can’t touch you.”

“I know that,” Will says.

It hurts him to notice the expansive gaps in his own cognition, and it hurts me to see his pain. 

He knows me, if little else. I should be thankful for that.

“Come to the kitchen,” I say. “I’ll tell you a story while I cook.”

He rises gracelessly. I lift him onto the counter, that spot by the window which he likes so much. This house is mostly windows. I purchased it long before Will developed a penchant for stripping off his clothes at inopportune moments.

“Tell me Leda.”

Of course he wants to hear _Leda and the Swan_ again. Had I not explained it to him, it would be but another poem whose cadence lulled him to sleep, forgotten by morning. 

Instead we spent the night discussing rape, for which an understanding of consent is prerequisite—consent implies sex, and any mention of sex inevitably leads to yet another explanation of pregnancy, anatomy, and homosexuality.

Never love. He seems to understand that well enough.

I know the poem by heart, and recite it as I work:

“A sudden blow: the great wings beating still.  
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed  
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,  
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.”

I catch Will’s rapture from the corner of my eye. He hears my voice as the truly pious hear hymns: with the soul rather than the ear. Just as well, since hearing is one of his many diminished faculties.

“How can those terrified vague fingers push  
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?  
And how can body, laid in that white rush,  
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?  
A shudder in the loins engenders there—”

“Loins?” He asks.

I gesture to my own, and his face brightens in recognition. I bite my lip, knowing he’ll ask again the next time I recite the poem.

“The broken wall, the burning roof and tower  
And Agamemnon dead.  
Being so caught up,  
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,  
Did she put on his knowledge with his power  
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?”

The next flash of lighting coincides with the poem’s final syllable. His body hardens. Before I can react, Poppy is whining at his feet. I catch Will in my arms mere moments before he slips from the counter.

His seizures are triggered by light, stress, alcohol, sleep deprivation—the last thing he needs is another fall, and I should know better than to let him sit more than two feet off the ground. Poppy pillows herself under his spasming neck. I check my watch. I don’t know who I’ll call if the episode lasts longer than five minutes, as the two of us are legally dead, but I can do little else in these moments.

“You’re alright,” I murmur, my hand cupped loosely over his shoulder. I stretch out on the floor beside him and try to press my face into his neck, smell his sweetness—Poppy growls, and I withdraw. 

I tamp down my frustration. We’re both trying to protect him.

“You’re safe,” I say. “I’m here, Will. It will be over soon.”

His face is twisted in an agony which I know, logically, to be harmless muscle contractions. I can’t read it as anything but hurt. I do what I can: I recite the poem again, and if our meal burns itself irreversibly to the pan, so be it.

~

The storm doesn’t end. It’s been drizzling for weeks, barely a ray of sun to be found on the ocean’s choppy surface. That’s never stopped Will from gazing out the window for hours, over the cliff—again, again—and toward the horizon.

I wonder what he’s thinking, how he’s thinking: does he still hear words in his mind’s ear, and if so, does my voice still speak them? Is he remembering the smell of copper and brine, the screaming of gulls; does he hold any recollection of that night, or has the torrential stream of memory died down to a trickle?

From my woefully restricted viewpoint, his surface is placid enough to breed mosquitos. I fear they won’t survive long enough to feed.

We eat together in the empty bathtub, which he finds enchanting. He doesn’t understand that only a windowless room can protect him from another spasm, that thunder can’t hurt him but lightning can. I wipe marinara sauce from his chin and wonder how difficult it would be for one man to install a dozen floor-to-ceiling curtains.

He feeds Poppy. He cries gently when I refuse to let him accompany me on her brief walk; he sobs when I instead lock him in the bathroom with his sketch pad and non-toxic markers. I can’t handle another seizure tonight, especially not while holding the leash, but he doesn’t understand. There is so much he no longer understands.

Though I spend every dripping moment imagining the myriad ways he could hurt himself in that tiny space, I return to find his tears stifled, the slight forgotten, and that’s almost worse.

He’s drawn me a picture: Poppy with big, brown eyes and a blur for a tail, signed “Will Gram.” I hang it on the fridge and help him brush his teeth. I’m far too tired to bathe him tonight.

“I can’t see,” Will says as I secure the sleep mask around his eyes. 

I cradle him in my arms and say, “You don’t need to see. It’s time to go to sleep.”

“I don’t want to sleep.” He sits up; I pull him down with a deep sigh. 

Will sleeps like an infant now—no night terrors, no drenched sheets—but he resents every moment of separation, and would stay up all night if I let him: taking books off shelves, opening taps and forgetting to close them.

I love him. I owe him. But I am so tired.

“We watched the sun set, William. It’s time for bed,” I say. 

He sits up again. “Where’s Poppy?”

“She’s sleeping too, in the study.”

“I want to sleep in the study.”

_Fine. Navigate the stairs yourself. Wake up and cry for me until you shatter this glass house—_

“Not tonight,” I say. “Poppy needs her rest.”

He finally lies back, fidgeting with the Velcro on his sleep mask. _Snick. Snick._ I’m exhausted, and it doesn’t bother me.

I’m nearing a beach—not ours, rocky and unforgiving, but a beach on one of the lesser known Greek isles, with powder-white sand and turquoise water. I’m floating on the surface, drifting out to sea, when he wakes me.

“Hannibal?” He asks.

I pry one eye open to find him staring at me again, mask discarded. He’s thinking hard enough to wrinkle his smooth forehead.

“Yes, Will?”

He bites his lip, ducks his face into the crook of my shoulder, and mumbles, “Can you rape me?”

I close my eyes again. Lefkada’s warm sunshine beckons, but so does Will, with one hand worming its way into my silk boxers.

“—want to know what it’s like,” he’s saying. “Hannibal. Hannibal? Are you awake?”

“You know I can’t do that,” I sigh.

But he doesn’t know. Less than forty-eight hours since his initial exposure to the concept, Will has surely forgotten everything he learned about consent or lack thereof. This is another conversation we’re doomed to repeat ad nauseam until death.

I drift back to sleep.

“ _Hannibal._ ”

He’s on my chest, unaware of his own weight. My hand reflexively finds his hair. Here is the divot in his skull that changed everything: him into unspoiled Adam, me into his perpetual, world-weary serpent. Sometimes I envy him. Divine knowledge leaves much to be desired.

“Hannibal,” he repeats. “Why won’t you show me?”

_It’s harmful. It’s dangerous—_

_—but_ why _is it harmful? Why is it dangerous? Why, why, why?_

And tomorrow, again. I will not sleep through the night until he forgets entirely or remembers entirely—this liminal state will destroy me.

I blink the tiredness from my eyes, stretch, and flip on the light. He sits back on his haunches. I often wonder if he learns more from Poppy than he does from me.

“If I show you, will you go to sleep?”

He gives me an awkward nod. His neck is stiff, but I should count myself lucky he isn’t paralyzed. Still, I miss the backtalk I’ve come to expect from him. In a past life, perhaps, I wanted Will to listen to me.

Never like this.

“Lie down,” I say, a false harshness in my voice. “Take your clothes off.”

Will instantly shimmies out of his boxers and unbuttons his nightshirt, which I rip from his shoulders. His back is gnarled with scars, and every time I see them, I’m drawn briefly into that dread which I inhabited for months: is tonight the night Will Graham will die, despite my best efforts?

That night never came. Will Graham lives on, generally speaking.

I fold my clothes and stroke myself, searching out the image which will allow me to honor his request. Soon enough, I find him: feral, drenched in the Dragon’s tar-black blood, unsatisfied until he tastes mine as well. His eyes were so bright.

I lunge forward and pin him to the bed. He doesn’t struggle; he smiles and kisses my neck, because he hasn’t yet understood the point I’m trying to make.

I bite him. “Rape is _violent_ ,” I say, because I’ve learned to oversimplify.

He thrusts his clavicle into my mouth and sighs, “Oh.”

“It’s an act of aggression. It hurts the victim.”

“I’m the victim?” Will asks, eyes wide and dull.

“Yes.” I twist his hair in my fist until his grin falters and his teeth sink into the soft pink flesh of his lower lip. “I’m going to rape you,” I say. If he asks again what the word means, after tonight, I might find the end of my patience.

I squeeze his leaking cock. He can’t get harder than half-mast anymore, but on the rare occasion he convinces me to masturbate him—since he can’t do it himself—I’m able to make him ejaculate using prostate stimulation. I don’t understand how the damage from a single impact was so diffuse as to affect nearly every aspect of his functioning without killing him. Perhaps if he had landed on top of me, instead, our roles would be reversed.

I’m flagging. I conjure once more my swift, deadly creation, cruel and carnivorous, dripping darkness. I thrust against his thigh and slick my fingers with oil—blood, tar, ichor. I bury two inside him.

“Does it hurt?”

“No,” he breathes—and I hesitate, here, because haven’t I hurt him enough for one lifetime?

Yes. Of course I have, but I have a point to make.

With one final crook of my fingers, a pulse of blood to his cock, I withdraw and shove myself into him. Will squeals and gasps in delight, and I pin his shoulders to the bed with my full weight. He is still smiling. I fuck the satisfaction off his face.

His white shoulders flex in my grip and his toes grip my calves like a rose briar. He bucks against me. I protect the cup of his skull with one hand and smack him across the face with the other.

Will goes still. My cock twitches in his guts.

My heavy burden echoes away with the dissipating impact, and I slap him again.

“H-ah—” again, thrusting into him until he winces.

“Han—Han—” again, tears beading in his dull eyes. I raise my palm once more.

“Hannibal!” He wails.

I pull out, still pulsing with want.

“Stop!” Will says. “D-do you hate me?”

The weight collapses on my shoulders once more; I collapse on his chest. He smells briny and his skin is rough against my cheek. I relax the muscles in my face; once I’ve collected myself, I return to him with a gentle smile.

“Of course not,” I say. “I love you more than you can ever know, Will.”

“So why did you…?”

“You asked me to rape you. Rape is a violent act.”

At long last, his eyes focus on mine. I catch a glimpse of him, prickly and bloodstained.

“It’s…kind of good,” he says. “But I want to stop now.”

“Of course,” I say, and kiss his forehead.

He presses close to me in the darkness, and we fall asleep, not unsatisfied.

~

My watch wakes me with a gentle vibration at six in the morning. I creep out of bed, check that he’s still sleeping, and walk Poppy around the house before letting her into my bedroom. I’ll never acclimate to dog hair on the furniture, but if Will wakes, she needs to be there to keep him safe and occupied.

I drive thirty miles to the nearest town and collect my groceries. Will requires constant supervision, so I only leave the house when he’s sleeping. Each brief venture into society is a treat, despite my constant worry that I’ll come home to find him dead.

I stop in a fifties-style diner for bitter coffee and homemade apple pie, both of which I tolerate for the chance to make small talk with the waitress and the regulars. Her name is Mary and she wants to go to college. Tom and Marcus flirt with her incessantly, but she knows by now they’re harmless.

If things had gone as planned, their names would be María, Tomás, Marco; I would eat breakfast out, whenever I liked, but I doubt I’d bother with an establishment such as this, since we’d be thoroughly integrated into high society. As it stands, these three are my only company outside the house.

Her usual cheer is dampened today. I get nowhere by asking after her misery, so I share my own, covertly: could I bring some pancakes home for my ward?

As expected, she was unaware of Will’s existence. I never told her. She draws the whole sad story out of me, or at least the version I can safely share.

“It isn’t easy, but I care deeply for him,” I finish, and the three of them nod in sympathy.

As I’m leaving, Mary rests a hand on my shoulder and apologizes for acting so distant. I draw it out of her in turn: she was sexually assaulted by the sheriff’s deputy in the storeroom of her workplace. She refuses to report it. In a tight-knit community such as this, she has no recourse.

I express my revulsion, and implore her to tell everyone she trusts, before they hear it from him. Perhaps her friends can spread the word and run him out of town. I have no real hope of this happening, but it’s better if I’m not the only one who knows.

I drive home, listening to local radio until I’m out of range.

~

“Hannibal!”

Will and Poppy are on me at once, nearly knocking the cold pancakes from my grasp. I place them on the counter before gripping Will in a tight hug.

“You should be sleeping,” I say, though I know I stayed too long in town.

“I woke up,” says Will. He kisses my cheek. “I fed Poppy and took her outside, and I gave her a bath!”

My face blanches. “You gave her a bath?”

“She had mud on her feet,” says Will, and then he turns and adheres himself to the window, attention divided between the rain and my presence.

“Thank you, Will. I’m sure she’s very grateful.”

I slip into the bathroom to assess the damage. Minimal. Paw prints on the tile, water on the bathmat. No one is bleeding; no one has drowned. I quickly clean up and return to the kitchen to reheat Will’s pancakes.

He eats. I use the moment of peace to check up on my foreign investments and shift yet another lump sum into cryptocurrency—incredibly volatile, but anonymous, unlike the stock market.

Will asks me to read to him. I queue up a handful of the many recordings I’ve made: fables, poetry, and his own academic work, of which he has a vague recollection. Though they usually keep him busy for several hours, he interrupts me less than twenty minutes later, asking me to recite _Leda_ again.

And how can I say no, when such simplicity brings him so much pleasure? My time is not nearly as valuable as I allow myself to believe; how better to spend it than to brighten Will’s life? 

After all, I got what I wanted. Him.

“A sudden blow: the great wings beating still.  
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed…”

Something newly keen flickers through his eyes as he listens. In the middle of the third verse, he strikes.

My voice falters; I recoil from the slap, momentarily stunned.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Raping you,” says Will, beaming with pride. Then he kisses me. 

His kisses might have been hesitant once—I’ll never know—but now they’re sloppy, desperate. He drinks me in like whisky in a moment of self-loathing, and when he breaks away, he radiates a vitality I haven’t seen in two years.

“Will, do you—”

He hits me again and leaps onto my lap. The chair sways; I reach for the desk to steady us, but it’s already too late. We topple backwards. This time, he lands on top of me.

Nothing is bruised in the afterglow, save my pride. It’s a pleasant ache. I’m thrilled to have underestimated him, and thrilled, for once, to be proven wrong. 

I explain once more the basics of consent, sexuality, violence. He listens like a sea sponge starved of water.

~

That night, I give him a minuscule dose of the tranquilizer I’ve been saving for the end of my patience. It seems silly now to hoard an exit strategy I’ll never employ.

I drive to town, thrumming with cold adrenaline.

The address, obtained through a spoofed call and some light social engineering, is a one-bedroom house on the outskirts of town. There is no security system. There are few robberies here, and the police department spends most of its time confiscating marijuana and scrubbing graffiti.

A single porch light makes the muddy driveway glimmer like a jewelry store case. I take the back entrance. Unlocked. Creaking floorboards under worn linoleum, the guttural snore of untreated sleep apnea. 

This could be a mercy killing, but it isn’t.

~

I close the basement door.

Regret is a luxury I’ve never allowed myself—there is nowhere to go but forward. A shower to wash the mud from my ankles, and then up the stairs, to the peaceful curl of Will’s body into the space where I should be.

But Will isn’t there.

The bed is warm, so he can’t be long gone. “Will?” I call.

He shouldn’t be awake. I gave him phenobarbital. He shouldn’t be able to stand.

But I’ve never used it on him before; I treat his seizures with Klonopin when absolutely necessary. Could he be having an unusual reaction? Is he _safe_? I wrack my mental catalogue of medical literature, but come up empty handed. Perhaps some patients become paradoxically agitated.

“Will!” I shout.

My guts twist themselves into freezing knots. It was an unfamiliar sensation, once. Now I understand it to be fear on another’s behalf.

I check the bathroom, all but leap down the stairs; I freeze in the parlor, regaining my common sense. Will doesn’t come when called, but Poppy does.

Sure enough, she rockets out of the kitchen at the sound of her name and embeds her claws in my trousers. “Poppy,” I say, as though she can understand me. “Where is Will?”

Either she is smarter than I give her credit for, or our goals are in alignment. She nips at my heel and trots into the kitchen, looking over her shoulder to ensure I’m following. My heart sinks as she approaches the stairs.

“Will?” I ask of the sliver of light under the door. 

The light flickers. 

I left my prey in darkness.

The chef’s knife is gone from my block. I take the paring knife, short but sharp, and wield it close to my chest. I will _not_ strike on reflex. Observe. Asses. Act only if the situation—

The door swings open, and I lash out. The knife misses his hand, strikes metal.

Will stands frozen, frowning first at my weapon, then at his own.

“Hannibal?” He asks.

“Will.” I embrace him, inhaling the chemical tang on his breath, then push him to arm’s length. “You should be sleeping.”

“I came downstairs to find Poppy, and I heard something in the basement. I just wanted to see what it was.” His eyes are wild. Thank God I didn’t try to overdose him; he’s clearly having an abnormal reaction.

Will isn’t bloodstained. His massive knife is as spotless as my small blade, so it stands to reason that no one is dead. Still, I descend the stairs ahead of him, restraining and cursing my own nervous hand.

Halfway down, it clicks: the deputy was awake. Will heard him. Now he’s quiet.

“William…” I scan the room: severed rope, an empty chair, deadly silence. “What did you do?”

“He asked me to untie him,” Will says.

“Stay back.” I caution him with one hand. “Don’t come any further.”

“I don’t know where he—”

“Hush.”

I duck behind the massive bandsaw. The overhead light is harsh, and the crevices of the room are alive with shadowed, flickering possibility. I scent the air. Fear, but whose?

“Hannibal, I—”

“ _Shh._ ”

He didn’t hurt Will but if he recognizes me, if he saw me in the early morning, before the needle slipped into his neck—no. I’m faster. I nearly stabbed Will on reflex; I’ll be the first to—

A cascade of glass and wine explodes in front of my face. I lunge forward.

Then the rope is garroted around my neck. His sweaty, chubby arms bracket my shoulders. Wine. A distraction; reflexes are useless—I slash at his legs and he falters just enough for me to twist in his grip.

Face to face with the behemoth of a man. No room for the knife. I see red.

“Down,” I snarl, and smash my forehead into his.

He gasps, stumbles, but doesn’t fall. He grips his head, chin tucked into his fat neck. I knee him in the groin—still he stands, feet planted, coming to his senses. 

His fist flies at my jaw. I dodge low and drive my knife into his heart.

No stain blooms across his white shirt. He yanks the blade free with a guttural growl and flings it across the room. His obesity has saved his life.

I have to take him down. I aim my elbow into his solar plexus—but he catches it, twists my arm behind my back, and finally hits the ground. On top of me.

A feeble hiss of breath is forced from my lungs. He must weigh three hundred pounds, and no matter how I struggle, I can’t throw him off. 

He grips my hair and smashes my face into the concrete.

Loud ringing fills my ears. Another blow, and my stomach lurches. I can’t protect my head. The third time, he slams my face into a puddle of vomit. I try to speak, but can barely sputter.

Who will care for Will when I’m dead?

He grips my skull in both hands and reels back for the killing blow—and then he collapses.

Two pairs of bare feet cross my double vision. Doubled heels slip in my vomit before finding balance. The deputy is dead, but I am dying. The world darkens. I can feel my oxygen-starved brain shutting down.

The corpse lurches once, twice—I have just enough room to free my chest, and with the power of that first glorious breath, I roll him all the way off. I breathe.

I’m staring into Will’s black, gleaming eyes. His white wrist smears blood and vomit off my face. He yanks the chef’s knife from the deputy’s back, tugs my head into his lap, and I breathe.

“He’s dead,” Will says, and I breathe.

A full erection presses into my cheek.

~

He watches intently as I clean and butcher the carcass. He asks few questions, and when he does, they’re terse and quiet. When he brushes my shoulder, when he rims his finger around the marbled fat of the deputy’s thigh, the clunky, jittering touch I’ve come to expect from him is absent.

I want nothing more than to take him into my mouth and suck him dry, but I must be pragmatic. Will struggles enough with consent as it is, and I don’t want to teach him that a full erection equals instant gratification, nor do I need him to mentally associate sex and murder. I can no longer rely on his impulse control. 

I don’t complain, though, when his length brushes against my thigh. I never touched him before the accident. Perhaps it would have felt like this.

We shower together. Any moment now, Will is going to return to himself—not the self for whom I sacrificed everything, but the self I’ve learned to accept, naive and confused; innocent, empty. The torrent of questions will start. My answers will trickle through him and down the drain.

But when we’re clean, tired, swaddled in soft robes and reclining opposite each other on the window seat, Will is still with me—or, I have as much of him as I could reasonably hope.

He’s thinking, face twisted into a pained grimace. I give him time, and when it softens, he says, “We’ve done this before.”

“Yes,” I say. “Once together, and once on your own.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

My gaze is drawn to the droplets of mist on the window, each reflecting a facet of uncertainty. Why didn’t I tell him? Will’s amnesia is diffuse and pervasive, and he is inconsistently aware of his own disability. Though I’ve explained it, he forgets. Eventually I couldn’t stand retraumatizing him.

“Do you remember what happened before we moved into this house?” I ask.

Will frowns. This house is his world, and that would be perfectly fine, if not for the windows.

“No,” he says at last. “Tell me.”

“We killed a man together,” I tell him, again. “You couldn’t live without me, nor could you live with the monster you knew me to be, so you hurled us over a cliff. We landed in shallow water, me on top of you. I’d been shot, and I didn’t attend to your hemmorage quickly enough. You sustained severe brain damage.”

His fingers find the dent in his skull. It was nearly impossible to keep him from touching the fresh wound, intent as he was on finger-fucking his own brain. I had to restrain him.

“You aren’t a monster,” he murmurs.

“I am. Think, Will. Why are we here? What do I do?”

“You kill people,” he says. “And eat them. And you take care of me and Poppy. You’re not a monster.”

My throat clenches. I’m never sure how to speak to him—what will stick, what bears repeating, what will hurt or comfort him—so I say nothing.

After a moment, he lets out a huff, the same sound Poppy makes when she’s ignored, and crawls into my lap. His soft mouth finds my earlobe.

“We eat people,” he whispers, like a schoolboy confessing his first kiss under cover of darkness.

“Not anymore.”

“What about the man in the basement?”

“Yes, I suppose we’ll have to dispose of him.” Then, reluctantly: “Thank you.”

Will’s face lights up. “For stabbing him?”

“For saving me,” I correct.

He sits back. A crooked smirk slips awkwardly across his mouth. “You’re welcome,” he says. “I like working with my hands.” 

They creep unsubtly up my thigh. If only he were so bold before the accident. 

“Why did you bring him here?” Will asks. Amusing as it is, I can’t pretend he understands the humor in asking that question while fondling me.

“He was a bad person.” My eyes slip shut. “But remember, William, it’s my burden to pass judgement. _Never_ make that decision on your own.”

Will shrugs. No indignation; no comment on my alleged God complex. 

“Why was he bad?”

I hesitate.

“He raped someone,” I say. “It wasn’t the same as what you and I did. We were pretending, but he wasn’t.”

“Pretending,” Will repeats, frowning.

“Yes. I don’t expect you to know the difference, but trust me when I say he was a bad person, and you aren’t.”

“I don’t care.” His hand slides higher up my thigh. I raise my brow. “Doesn’t matter if he’s bad and I’m not,” Will says. “You’re not going to kill me, right?”

I can’t tell him the thought hasn’t crossed my mind, so I tell him, “No. I’m not.”

Will grins wickedly and sinks his teeth into my neck. His graceless hand finds my crotch—but he pauses, withdraws. His mind is churning. I’m expecting a lost memory, a revelation about consent, a poetic interjection about the nature of good and evil.

Instead he asks, “Where’s Poppy?”

~

Poppy is in the basement, lapping spots of missed blood from the poured concrete. Will doesn’t need my help to wrangle her. He and Poppy have a connection bordering on telepathy. I’m quick to judge his ability to learn, to retain information, to keep up with responsibilities, but perhaps I don’t give him enough credit—when it comes to the dog, he is every bit the Will Graham I know.

And when he disappears into the bedroom, I naturally assume that he’s lying with her, or reading her children’s books in broken English. Only when I hear her puttering around the kitchen do I realize he isn’t with the dog. He’s waiting for me.

“Will?”

He’s lying naked on the bed, two fingers inside himself, the other hand experimentally touching his half-hard cock.

“Hannibal,” he says. “This doesn’t feel like when you do it.”

“Would you like some help?”

I’m already on the bed, face pressed into his soft hair. I lick the corner of his jaw, the healing cut I made while shaving him, and he squirms closer. “Not really,” he says. “It’s not the same now, since I’m not so afraid.” He presses his waning erection against my thigh. “Could you stab me?”

“Absolutely not.”

He pouts. “Why?”

“Not today,” I amend, just to see him smile. Of course I won’t stab him, but if he needs mortal terror…I could find a way to safely provide. “I’m tired.”

“Me too,” says Will, and he yawns dramatically to make his point. “Can we take a nap?”

“I would love nothing more.”

Tucked under the covers, shielded from the sunlight peeking through the clouds, he asks, “Are you going to kill people again?”

“Perhaps,” I say.

“Can I help?”

“Perhaps.”

Will smiles. “Thanks,” he says, and rolls over to signal that he’s ready to sleep.

I’m awake for another hour—not thinking, just holding him.


End file.
